Chelsea Clinton Explains Why Her Friendship With Ivanka Trump Ended In 2016
It’s official: Chelsea Clinton’s days of palling around with Ivanka Trump are over.
Appearing on “Watch What Happens Live” Thursday, Chelsea told host Andy Cohen she and Ivanka hadn’t spoken since their parents, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, battled for the presidency four years ago.
“I’ve not spoken to her since 2016,” she said. “I have no interest in being friends with someone who is not only complicit but actively taking part in this administration’s everyday collision of cruelty and incompetence.”
Given the marked difference in the political stances of their parents, Chelsea and Ivanka’s friendship had been the subject of intense media scrutiny for some time. In 2014, the two women appeared together at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards, happily embracing on the red carpet for the cameras.
A year later, Chelsea even compared Ivanka’s temperament to that of her own father, former President Bill Clinton, in an interview with Vogue.
“She’s always aware of everyone around her and ensuring that everyone is enjoying the moment,” she said at the time. “It’s an awareness that in some ways reminds me of my dad, and his ability to increase the joy of the room. There’s nothing skin-deep about Ivanka.”
Just days before the 2017 inauguration, Ivanka told “20/20” that she intended to maintain her friendship with Chelsea once her father was in the White House.
“She’s been a friend of mine long before the campaign, of course will be a friend of mine after,” she said. “I haven’t spoken about the specific challenges about this next chapter with her just yet, but I intend to.”
Though Chelsea and Ivanka were photographed in close proximity to one another at former President George H.W. Bush’s 2018 funeral, it appears things have now changed.
“It’s just really hard when there’s someone who’s actively embracing their candidate, whether it’s their father or not, who is trafficking in racism and sexism and anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, and homophobia, and transphobia, and conspiracy theories and lies and is so fundamentally corrupt,” Chelsea told Cohen Thursday, noting that Ivanka is “more than complicit, as anyone who has worked for him for so long by definition is.”
“I don’t want to be friends with someone like that,” she added.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
